Charcoal / Carbon

[Back in the fold]

I was reading a thread about a guys frustrations with his aquarium and the conversation drifted to carbon and it's merits or uselessness . In the olden days we used carbon , they called it charcoal back then , all the time. It was considered essential. You put a layer of filter floss over a layer of charcoal / carbon in your internal box filter. The uplift tubes on Undergravel filters had carbon cartridges on them. Everybody used it. JEHMCO sells a super duty carbon filter that you run your tap water through that is said to eliminate chlorine and chloramine . Really good three stage R/O units kill chlorine in the carbon block pre-filters before it gets to the membrane and damages it. So why has carbon fallen from favor ? Is it too simple and therefore not fancy enough for the modernists ? Just one more thing. We never threw it away either. Charcoal / carbon is porous , it doesn't wear out it clogs up. We boiled it and reused it. Boiled the living dickens out of it.

 

[Glenn407]

I remember those clear plastic corner filters well. I didn't know carbon could be made like new again by boiling it. I still use it in my ancient Magnum 200 filter.

 

[Slaphppy7]

There's an old thread on the subject here: https://www.fishforums.net/threads/carbon-or-no-carbon-in-your-filter.437685/

 

[GaryE]

That was the 'natural balanced aquarium" era, with no water changes. People had a problem in that aquariums smelled bad. Swampy. It's funny, people smoked enough cigarettes to imitate a dumpster fire in every house, but as a kid, every relative asked me how I could stand the smell of tanks. To avoid that, we bought charcoal.

Charcoal became popular because it lessened odours. As we learned more about aquarium management, it was no longer necessary. But the profit margins on it are excellent, so it is still sold.

 

[sharkweek178]

From what I understand, carbon doesn't do anything that you can't achieve with regular water charges. Actually, it does less than what water charges does.

 

[Glenn407]

Been wondering if in my Magnum canister I should just stuff the carbon section with those plastic scrubber pads when I run out of carbon.

 

[GaryE]

I add bio-media in the places where I'm supposed to add carbon/charcoal.

 

[Slaphppy7]

I add bio-media in the places where I'm supposed to add carbon/charcoal.

Same here, and for that matter, I replace sponges with other media, as well.

 

[GaryE]

Because I have an air driven killie set up, I use those ancient box filters, as well as sponge filters. I have 4 power filters on rainbow tanks, and they have sponge on top with tangled recycled plastic fibre below.

 

[Back in the fold]

Just as I thought. It's old hat from a forgotten era and therefore of no practical use. The intelligentsia have spoken.

 

[GaryE]

Just as I thought. It's old hat from a forgotten era and therefore of no practical use. The intelligentsia have spoken.

Not exactly. It was a specific response to a problem people found a better way to manage. It's like throwing salt in just because, or lighting candles under the tank so they heat slate on the bottom. They had a function, but they don't have a function anymore.

You can still do them, but watch the candles cracking glass. You can do laundry on a washboard too. It gets clean.

 

[Stan510]

If you do regular water changes,no need for carbon. IF, you are stretching out the changes because you have a great plant to fish balance? Then a cup or two of carbon acts like a water change..sweetens the sparkle and the Rainbows will spawn in the mornings like you had made a water change. Saving water in the southwest is very important so carbon fills a need..maybe not a big need with how thick my plant growth is and light fish load..but carbon is nice to use. I find 3 or 4 cups filters for a good two months or more on my 240 gallon.
Carbon is great. You could try those others by Fritz and Seachem that do the same as carbon and are reusable. Never tried them yet. I forget what they are called. Some prefer them.

 

[Back in the fold]

@GaryE Here's where I'm coming from. I still use salt and I still use carbon. Salt because it does something to make the fish vigorous and healthy. I have no disease , untimely fish deaths and don't get runty fish. I use carbon because my city water has a low concentration of chlorine only. Something that water changes and filtering and municipal water treatment plants can't do is eliminate pharmaceutical drugs and certain solvents from water. Can carbon ? I can't prove it but my gut says yes. My water is sparkling clean and smells sweet. My fish are great and I am happy. Never thought I would have to admit it but if I'm wrong and wasting my time and capitalist crumbs on carbon and salt then I must be a reactionary.

 

[GaryE]

@Back in the fold - I bought a bottle of Prime recently, and expect it'll last a very long time. I don't worry about chlorine. I pour from a hose, and most of it gasses of. It has zero effect on the fish in the low concentrations that remain, except for a couple of species. With them, I get no spawning for 4-5 days after a water change. Is it a dislike of fresh water? Could be, but I decided to see if it was that residual chlorine. In my old house, the chlorine was predictable and easy to clear. Here, there are days when the chlorine guys must fall asleep with the chlorine dosing pump on.

I found a syringe to measure the stuff with, and I'm testing it. In my larger tanks, I don't bother. If it makes it easier to breed my couple of sensitive species, then I'll know the chlorine caused problems. The rainbows will lay eggs with fresh water - it stimulates them. I don't worry with them.

If I find it useless, then I can recycle Prime as cologne.

If I start the water and get a face full of chlorine gas, then I use it on all tanks. The dosages are uneven here.

Salt is a problem chemical to me, as it is hard to get out and it does negatively affect my fish. It's an alien substance to my rainforest species here. It affects their breeding, which I see as an indicator of their overall health.

I'll wager that if you're doing water changes your water would smell sweet with carbon too. But carbon is harmless.

Every carbon dechlorination system I've seen pumped the water through lab grade carbon before it ever touched the tanks. It was outside the usual filtration loop.

I don't think it's wrong to be conservative in your fishkeeping ways, but when there's a change for a positive reason, it's worth exploring. Nothing will ever convince me to do a fishless cycle, for example. The chemistry experiment doesn't interest me and I think it's a waste of time and energy unless studying the cycle is the goal. I don't see it as an innovative practice. So I reject it and move on. If I see a thread where people explain it, good for them. Many find it fascinating to work with reagents.

If you salt tanks, that's your approach. The problem comes if you tell others this is what you must do - unless you know why you do things and where they come from, it becomes a ritual and nothing more. You'll end up founding a religion.

The biggest technological advance between when I started keeping fish as a kid 55 years ago and now is the water tap. Once we learned the sink drain and the water tap were key tools in this hobby, the change was spectacular. We could keep all kinds of great species, our tanks didn't smell like swamps, our fish lived longer, we could keep more fish in a tank, plants flourished... kaboom.

What I wish we'd rediscover is between our ears. The oldtimers knew fish were not going to be easily available forever. They tried hard to breed and share out the fish they bought, because they didn't see them pouring in to Petco as a product. They cost too much and supply lines were shaky, and the older generation gardened with their tanks. We buy them like annuals in the Springtime, for them to die in Fall and be bought again, and the whole hobby of breeding and maintaining fish has been withering fast. I'd like to see us get away from the disposable animal approach and not be afraid to get a little serious about the hobby. But that goes beyond salt and carbon.

 

[CarissaT]

I recently did a little research on this topic. Carbon does take out a lot of things, probably most of which are unwanted. It also will remove chelated metals which are needed for plants, so that’s the drawback if you have a planted tank. I used to use it when I had a piece of driftwood that would release a lot of tannins, to clear the brown tinge and it worked perfectly for that also. I’ve been doing a little experiment, I just added carbon to my canister and been testing the TDS. It seemed to drop by about 20ppm after I added the carbon, but then I messed up my experiment by adding a new piece of driftwood which seems to have brought the TDS back up to where it was but I can’t say for sure if it’s that or if my initial readings were incorrect because I have found some inconsistencies with my TDS meter as well. And I‘m getting a lot of evaporation because of my a/c blowing right onto the top of my tank. So I’ve proven nothing.

I did not know about boiling either. So maybe I’ll reattempt this experiment next time I clean my filter.